SNOW IN JULY

Most of you will know that last weekend Hugh and I made our assault on the mighty Ben Nevis. I am going to do a big post with some of the pictures when Hugh has sent them over to me, but I thought you might enjoy this. We thought that this (the back one of the two) was it, as you can see the summit is covered in cloud. Actually, the Ben is behind this mountain and is about another 1000ft up into the worst weather you can imagine in this country. The temperature at the top was -2 and it rained, sleeted, hailstoned and snowed on us. It took over four hours to get up, during which time we saw two people being rescued (always a comforting site when you are on your way up!!). The Glen of Nevis is jaw droppingly beautiful and I did get the urge to shout "FREEDOM" a lot, even though I am patently English. The view from the top is less than spectacular, you can see about the same distance as you are from your computer screen right now. You also have to contend with the light brigade style charge of about seventy gazillion (it's a lot) mozzers every time you step outside. I reckon I lost 95 thousand pints of blood.

It was a great place, although it is not hard to see how people die up there. There are several vertical ice walls with massive drops a few feet from the summit route, and the cloud makes it difficult if you lose your way. Needless to say, we did not smoke our Cuban stogies at the top, they would have disintegrated in minutes. Just so you know how tired we were when we got back, we had just three pints (the shame). In a masochistic way, it was a really great weekend, so much so that we are going to have a crack at Scafell and Snowdon, although I may need to think about the latter, as it means going to Wales.